


You're Home To Me

by Lt_Cmdr_Scribbler



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Relationship Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-19 23:59:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7382779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lt_Cmdr_Scribbler/pseuds/Lt_Cmdr_Scribbler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: "Because you're home to me, too."</p>
            </blockquote>





	You're Home To Me

Za’alia wasn’t exactly sure when she started to _expect_ Andronikos to be there, behind her shoulder. At first, his very presence was like a knife in her bubble of concentration. He radiated feelings differently like Khem Val or other sith did, which made him an anomaly in her group of acquaintances. He was short enough that Za’alia could look him straight in his eyes without effort, and that made for frequent shouting matches and just as frequent instances when his smouldering brown eyes bored into hers and she turned and walked out of the room because she couldn’t argue with eyes like those and it scared her.

What a thought. Andronikos Revel, at some point, scared _her_ : Lord Kallig, Darth Nox, Za’alia Zhang.

Now, though, with that _idiot, lunk-headed_ pirate floating in the medbay with injuries that, with all of her power, Za’alia herself hadn’t been able to fix, she was more scared than she had ever been in her entire life. And, yes, that was counting the slave years.

Anyone would tell you that neither Andronikos Revel nor Darth Nox were given to bouts of sentimental talk, but sometimes, just between the two of them, in the completely bug-free suite in Darth Nox’s base of operations on Dromund Kaas, they would give voice to some of their more hidden thoughts. Za’alia in particular remembered a conversation they had just after their wedding, (still such a strange thought, _their wedding,_ ) in which she said that she hadn’t expected to get to this, this happiness.

“Why?” Andronikos had asked, tilting his head and smirking a little. “You kept expecting me to take off, huh?”

That deserved a slap, which her pirate took with a bout of laughter as she flushed and insisted, “No! No, of course I didn’t. It’s more that I didn’t believe we’d _live_ to get this, this… happy ending, for wont of a better phrase.”

And then Andronikos just _looks_ at her, and Za’alia doesn’t have to wonder how she became a sucker for those burning brown eyes, because she knows damn well that she was under the spell of those eyes almost from the beginning.

“You wanna know why I never left, not even when I could?” he asks, rough and low in the absence of lighting. “Because every time I thought about it, I knew I didn’t have anywhere else to be. And then I started to think of that little fighter as home, and I knew I was a goner. You’re _home_ to me, Zal.”

Za’alia had initially been reminded of one of the letters he’d sent her while he was away on various missions, the one with the subject line of “Late Night, Too Sober.” That was the first time that he’d told her, verbal or written, that he’d been briefly scared of how he couldn’t remember how their relationship came to be, but couldn’t find anything to regret about it. It had put them on an even ground, because she couldn’t find when exactly they crossed the line between friends to lovers, either.

Watching Andronikos floating in the turquoise kolto, hearing the thready blip of his pulse on the monitoring machines, Za’alia felt the fear and anger building up in her throat, threatening to choke her and send her over the edge. The _wrongness_ of it all made her want to cripple a battleship; he should _not_ be in there, he _should_ be perfectly healthy and teaching Chell how to fly the _Kiukamaie_ , being a ruggedly handsome husband and a very patient father.

Striding right up to the kolto tank, Za’alia put her hand on the glass, channeling all of the fear and anger into love, letting it wash the disorientation and complete sense of _loss_  away.

“Come home, ‘Dron. I need you here, because… because you’re home to me, too.”

The pulse, no longer thready and weak, beat stronger, and Za’alia smiled. They’d both be home in no time.


End file.
